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INS Lecture 8 - Lost in Translation: Lessons in Security Force Assistance from Special Forces Advisory Missions
The U.S. spent billions in Iraq and Afghanistan constructing security forces, only to see those armies collapse quickly after the American withdrawal. But amid the catastrophic military disaster were pockets of success. Without the Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) fighting a classic retrograde across northern Iraq, Baghdad might have fallen to ISIS. In Afghanistan, the Afghan Commandos helped hold the perimeter circling the Kabul airport as their country disintegrated around them. This lecture and Frank Sobchak's book, Training for Victory, explores why those smaller units were successful while the larger missions failed disastrously, along with examining other successful efforts in El Salvador, The Philippines, and Colombia.
Lecturer:
Colonel (Ret.) Frank Sobchak, PhD, is an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College. He has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Reichman University, Arizona State University, Joint Special Operations University, Tufts University, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He holds a BS in Military History from West Point, a MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and a PhD in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. During his twenty-six-year career in the U.S. Army, he served in various Special Forces assignments including leading teams and companies in 5th Special Forces Group advising foreign militaries and representing U.S. Special Operations Command as a congressional liaison. He commanded Special Forces units during peacekeeping operations in Kosovo and in combat in Iraq. His final assignments included garrison command (akin to being a mayor or city manager of an Army base) and leading the Army effort to publish an official history of the Iraq War. That effort spanned five years and included the declassification of over 30,000 pages of documents and several hundred interviews in addition to having access to a similar sized set of documents and interviews that had not yet been released. The project’s culmination resulted in the publication of the 1,500-page two volume set, The U.S. Army in the Iraq War. He has been a frequent contributor to television, radio, and print interviews for topics such as Middle East security matters, defense reform, the impact of technology on intelligence and espionage, civil military relations, and special operations forces. He is the former Chair of Irregular Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, a senior fellow at the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, a future security fellow at New America, an advisor to the Special Operations Forces program at the Irregular Warfare Initiative, and a contributor (Fellow) at the MirYam Institute, and has been published in Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal, The Jerusalem Post, Defense One, The Hill, War on the Rocks, Newsweek, Time, the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, Telem, and the Small Wars Journal. Frank’s latest book, Training for Victory: Special Forces Advisory Missions from El Salvador to Afghanistan, published in November 2024 and was selected for the War on the Rocks 2024 holiday reading list.
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Channel: U.S. Naval War College
Published: 2026-05-07
Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLuoLaKTLcw